Special counsel John Durham’s investigation and indictments appear to be affirming what has long been suspected: that many of the biggest Trump-Russia collusion claims can be traced back to the Clinton campaign.
Durham’s indictments of Igor Danchenko, British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s main source, and lawyer Michael Sussmann outline the deep links that Hillary Clinton’s campaign had in creating and peddling the discredited dossier and pushing refuted claims that Russia’s Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization had a secret back channel during the 2016 election.
Steele was hired by an opposition research firm, Fusion GPS, which had been hired by Marc Elias, then a top Perkins Coie lawyer and general counsel of the Clinton campaign. Elias met with Steele during the 2016 contest and periodically briefed the campaign about Fusion’s findings. The Alfa Bank claims were pushed to the FBI and Steele by Sussmann and others.
Danchenko, a United States-based and Russian-born analyst, was charged with making false statements to the FBI about his sources of information, including the role longtime Clinton ally Charles Dolan played in supplying at least the basis of certain claims. Durham pointed out that Dolan, beyond helping the presidential campaigns of both Clintons, also spent years doing business in Russia, worked with Russians in 2016, and met Danchenko in Moscow, passing information along to him, some details of which were apparently embellished by the Russian national and perhaps by Steele himself.
Danchenko indicated he plans to plead not guilty.
Durham appears to be making the case that many of these collusion claims are largely fabrications by Democratic operatives.
RATCLIFFE EXPECTS “MANY” INDICTMENTS IN DURHAM INVESTIGATION
Andrew McCarthy, a contributing editor at National Review and former federal prosecutor, told the Washington Examiner, “The Danchenko indictment, on top of the Sussmann indictment, indicates that Durham is operating on theory that the Trump/Russia ‘collusion’ narrative was a fabrication of the Clinton campaign — i.e., the campaign created it through its agents (Perkins Coie, which retained Glenn Simpson/Fusion GPS, which recruited Steele, who brought in Danchenko). Through those same agents, the campaign peddled the collusion storyline to the media and the FBI. As a campaign strategy, this enabled Mrs. Clinton to portray Trump to the electorate as a Putin puppet who was probably under a serious investigation.”
DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz’s 2019 report concluded that Steele’s dossier played a “central and essential” role in the FBI’s effort to obtain wiretap orders against Carter Page, a 2016 campaign adviser for former President Donald Trump. The DOJ watchdog criticized the bureau for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to its surveillance of Page and its reliance on the Steele dossier.
Dolan “interacted with” top Russian officials in 2016 who wound up in Steele’s dossier, and Durham indicated Danchenko and Dolan began talking about a business deal with Steele in April 2016.
Horowitz said Danchenko “contradicted the allegations of a ‘well-developed conspiracy’ in” Steele’s dossier.
McCarthy emphasized, “Most alarming fact in the indictment that is not getting the attention it merits: The FBI did not interview Danchenko until January 2017, by which time it had gotten two FISA warrants based on the dossier.”
McCarthy said Durham’s “theory appears to be that the FBI was duped, but that is hard to believe, especially when there was no effort to corroborate the allegations before they went to the FISA court.”
He argued: “The more solid theory, to my mind, is the FBI was convinced that Trump was a bad guy and that the evidence would eventually bear that out if they kept the investigation going long enough.”
John Ratcliffe, Trump’s director of national intelligence, declassified handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan showing he briefed then-President Barack Obama in 2016 on an unverified Russian intelligence report that claimed Clinton planned in July 2016 on tying Trump to Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee to distract from her email scandal.
Ratcliffe insisted this weekend that all signs point to Durham zeroing in on the Clinton campaign.
Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, unearthed significant problems with the FBI’s use of FISA and emerged as a vocal opponent of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
“Every new revelation about the dossier exposes it as not just false, but comically absurd,” Nunes told the Washington Examiner. “FBI officials and the entire mainstream media were mesmerized by outlandish tales of pee tapes and secret European rendezvous that were invented by bumbling Democratic operatives. I commend special counsel Durham for all the light he is shining on this ridiculous hoax.”
The indictment against Sussmann centers on a September 2016 meeting between him and then-FBI general counsel James Baker in which Sussmann pushed Trump-Russia allegations. While Durham says Sussmann told Baker he was not working for any client, the special counsel contends he was secretly doing the bidding of Clinton’s campaign and billing it to her, as well as working on behalf of technology executive Rodney Joffe. Sussmann pleaded not guilty.
Steele testified in a British court that Sussmann provided him with other claims about Alfa Bank’s alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a late July 2016 meeting.
The Durham indictment said Sussmann, Joffe, and Elias “coordinated and communicated about the Russian Bank-1 allegations.” The indictment also said that Elias “exchanged emails with the Clinton Campaign’s campaign manager, communications director, and foreign policy adviser concerning the Russian Bank-1 allegations.”
Clinton’s foreign policy adviser was Jake Sullivan, who is now President Joe Biden’s national security adviser.
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Durham also obtained a guilty plea from former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted last year that he falsified a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew FISA surveillance authority against Page by editing a CIA email in 2017 to state that Page was “not a source.”
Mueller’s investigation concluded that Russia interfered in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
